Mobile communications systems are known which can provide enough bandwidth to allow streaming of video using advanced compression techniques, such as MPEG-4.
DVB receivers are known in applications such as digital television. Usually, DVB receivers are fixed and mains-powered. However, mobile handheld terminals are usually battery-powered and so power is limited.
The average power consumption of a DVB receiver can be reduced by using a scheme based on time division multiplexing (TDM). Such a scheme is called time slicing.
If a service is requested, data can be transmitted using time slicing. Bursts of data are sent using significantly higher bandwidth compared to the bandwidth needed to send the data at a rate, which is appropriate for direct use or rendering. Each burst includes an indication of time to the beginning of the next burst, which is referred to as “delta-t”. Between bursts, data is not transmitted, allowing other services to use the bandwidth allocated to the service. Thus, the receiver need only stay active for a portion of time while receiving bursts. Nevertheless, received bursts can be buffered and consumed at a rate intended for use or rendering.
In most DVB transmission systems, such as terrestrial DVB (DVB-T), data is transmitted unidirectionally to receivers. Forward error correction may be included in the transmitted data to recover data. However, the receiver may not be configured for forward error correction or for a particular forward error correction scheme.
The present invention seeks to ameliorate this drawback and/or to provide a method of transmitting bursts.